This project is an enhancement of NASA's International Space Station webpage. The ability to enable users in the International Space Station Program to transfer and manage images via the Internet is critical. These image files can be stored into the image fields of tables in the MS SQL Server 7.0 database. This approach to managing images is an improvement over the traditional approach of storing images in directories as files on a hard disk and then storing the file name in a database. The system architecture design and user-friendly graphical user interface are easy for users to learn and enable convenient use the application.
The thesis provides a summary of Internet-related technologies relevant to the project, including CGI, Java, Java Serverlet and JSP. The Java Servlet and JSP are platform independent. They can access any ODBC database by using a JDBC-ODBC bridge or access databases that have JDBC drivers. ASP is a Microsoft Windows-specific product that runs only with IIS. It can access ODBC by using ADO. CGI, written in languages other than Perl, requires a recompilation before it can be installed on another system. CGI, in Perl, can access any ODBC database. When accessing the same SQL database, ASP performs better when it employs ADO than with other techniques.